Hi there, pwstill,
Thank you for visiting the QuickBooks Community. I'll be sharing details on how sales tax adjustments work in QuickBooks Desktop. Then, ensure you'll be able to pay your sales tax without any issues.
QuickBooks Desktop helps you keep an accurate record of taxes so you can easily monitor and remit them to the appropriate tax collecting agency. That said, when adjusting a sales tax in QuickBooks, you'll have options to make a positive and negative one. I suggest creating a sales receipt or a credit memo for updating the tax amount. With this, a journal entry isn't necessary for doing adjustments and that's the reason it doesn't show up when you pay the sales tax.
Then, to see further details on how paying taxes works in QuickBooks, you can click this article: Pay sales tax.
Lastly, you may refer to this article to view different troubleshooting steps to resolve unexpected results you may encounter while managing your sales tax in QuickBooks Desktop: How to resolve common sales tax issues.
Keep me posted for additional questions about sales tax or other concerns related to QBDT. I'd be more than happy to help. Wishing you the best of luck.
